Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker served as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s chief strategist and executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during key days of the Civil Rights movement. He is perhaps best remembered as Dr. King’s field general throughout the history-altering Birmingham Campaign, (including in Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants), where his ambitious activism helped defeat the violent tyranny of segregationist Bull Connor.

In 2016, Dr. Walker and his wife and fellow civil rights leader Therese Ann Walker gave exclusive interviews to Steve Klinsky for RealClearLife, the archives of which now live on InsideHook. They reveal much about life with Dr. King in the most vital days of the Civil Rights movement, from his favorite joke to the untold story of the landmark Letter From a Birmingham Jail.

The interviews are being reissued here in honor of King and the Walkers on this MLK holiday.

Klinsky’s memories of Dr. Walker, issued on the occasion of his death in 2018, can be read here.